Ted Leo

The hardest working man in show business may have passed, but workaholic Ted Leo sits near the top of the heap of his potential successors, his non-stop tour schedule pretty much the only thing keeping him from cranking out an album a year.

It's actually been more than two years between Shake the Sheets and the new Living With the Living-- an eternity in Leo time-- so that extended gap proved the perfect place to start when Pitchfork caught up with the prolific guy prior to the album's release.

Pitchfork: It's been a pretty long time between records, at least for you.

Ted Leo: Yeah. By the time it comes out I guess it will have been almost two-and-a-half years.

Pitchfork: How much of that was by design, how much was business, and how much was due to the label change from Lookout to Touch & Go?

Ted Leo: You know, almost none of it was any of the above. It clearly wasn't by design. I suppose the label change could have actually affected me had I actually had an album ready to release! But it was mainly just our touring schedule and my writing schedule. I suppose I chalk most of it up to our touring schedule. There wasn't a whole lot of time to even conceive of what a next record would be. It's not that I wasn't writing songs over the last few years, but it took me the full two years to complete what became the album. We were doing so much running around-- living in the present-- that eventually two years had passed.

Pitchfork: How affected are you during the writing process knowing, increasingly, that people will be listening? You were able to sneak out your first couple of records slightly more under the radar, but with each album you've put out since there's been a greater degree of anticipation, and maybe expectation as well.

Ted Leo: That's a totally fair question. To be completely honest with you, it's certainly something that I am aware of. When I'm writing lyrics, I do consider how they scan even when they're read on a page. It's part of the package for me, and I'm certainly aware that there is an audience.

Ultimately, I'm going to make the record that I feel compelled to make at the time. The question of the audience winds up more of a question mark than anything else. If it ever comes to bear, it's more like, "Hmm, I wonder how people will feel about that?" As opposed to "I hope that if I believe this that others will, too!" The weirdest thing about the whole growing anticipation is that in the lead up to this particular record, I have to admit that I'm feeling slightly over-exposed, you know? I'm just not used to dealing with this level of interest, at all, let alone this early in the life cycle of a record. Not to be grandiose-- oh, I'm an artist, and I want to make the record I want to make!-- but it is the case that I have done this for long enough and in enough relative obscurity that I'm secure enough that I'm going to make the record I want to make. Whether fans come along or not-- I hope they do, but if they don't that's the way it goes. But now in the lead up to the record, I'm actually finding myself getting a little nervous. I'm waiting for the inevitable backlash. It's kind of a bummer. I used to be able to sneak stuff out and be amazed when people show up to the shows. Now there's a little pressure.

Pitchfork: That's one of the advantages of cranking them out every year. Before people have a chance to initiate a backlash, you've moved on. People are too busy playing catch-up to cry sell out.

Ted Leo: That's totally true. And the lag time between the last record and this one contributed to anticipation.

Pitchfork: Did you realize it was time to slow down and write enough songs for an album, or is that just how long it took until you had enough songs for an album?

Ted Leo: Usually, it's "we've got an album to do, I better write some songs." [laughs] This time, to be totally honest, it could have wound up that way if I had sat down and thought about it more. I started working well over a year ago. The oldest songs on this record are about a year-and-a-half old, if not a little bit older. We recorded this album this past fall, but it was originally supposed to be recorded the spring previous, and we had to kind of shuffle things around. It wound up being two years. There really was no design to it. And circumstances as they were over those two years, I didn't even get to the point that I usually get to where I'm, like "Oh my God! We've got to crank a record out!"

Pitchfork: Is it depressing that there are songs on the album over a year old that still feel extremely timely and very much of the now?

Ted Leo: Yeah, absolutely. That's certainly part of what made my writing this record so tough. I actually have probably over another album's worth of completely demoed music, with no words to it.That wasn't hard at all. I was flushing riffs down the drain. But when I did set aside time to write, three weeks off or whatever, I would sit down and think about what the hell I wanted to say and it was really tough, in large part because I would look at what's going on and affecting me and realized that I've addressed it all before and there's almost nothing new to discuss.

I was actually watching a little bit of the House debate about the Non-Binding Resolution [against the Iraq troop build up], and it struck me that it might as well be 2003, even at this point. The arguments that people are making-- while I wouldn't suggest that our House members should not make them-- it really is the same back and forth. Over and over and over again. And that's just about Iraq, not everything else that one lives through in a life. So I was definitely having a hard time coming up with the goods. But in terms of how the older songs fit in with the newer songs, the early songs that I wrote for this record are like the end of the process of thought for me that made up Shake the Sheets. Which was ultimately almost more depressing than what this record ended up being. Really almost all the songs on that record are about trying to totally pull yourself up from a place of utter dejection, you know? By the time I got to the end of that cycle, the first year of touring, I was thinking more about how to rejuvenate oneself. So a lot of the early songs I wrote for this record, like "La Costa Brava", are about that. Eventually, by the end of the writing process, I was able to start getting pissed off about stuff again! [laughs] So it kind of worked out in some weird, winding way.

Pitchfork: Where does the title come from?

Ted Leo: I can't remember how it actually came into my head. But the idea is that there are two sides of the same coin, one being that at a certain point in the process of making this record and pulling my hair out over lyrics-- not just writing them but living with the things that I'm supposed to be writing abut-- I got to this point where I made a conscious decision to reject the culture of fetishizing death, whether it's the use of death for political purposes or personal agendas. There's work to be done among the living. So: living with the living. And then the other side of the coin was, boy, people really suck sometimes, and it sure can suck being stuck living with the living when what you love about life, including people, seems to have gone. There are songs on the record that deal specifically with that loss.

Pitchfork: A lot of the songwriters people point to as your influences, people like Paul Weller, eventually seem to give up on being political. It's almost like it was too exhausting for them.

Ted Leo: Weller is a tough example. For a long time it was almost surprising at how he didn't give up. To the very bitter end of the Jam and all through the Style Council it's almost like his anger was getting sharper. When he busted out with his solo career, it was quite obviously a much more personal thing. The other big two that people slap on me, Billy Bragg and Joe Strummer, their methods shifted but they pretty much kept it up to the end, at least as far as Strummer was concerned.

Pitchfork: Well, Strummer had his lost years, drinking and doing drugs.

Ted Leo: I guess the question is, what about giving up? Are you allowed to give up at a certain point? I don't know. I've always felt that it's great when you can take inspiration from people who don't "give up," and I think you're allowed to be disappointed when people do, too. As a fan, you're certainly allowed to have opinions about the art people make, and you're allowed to feel disappointed when you feel someone's dropped the ball. But at the same time, ultimately, I can't begrudge someone else going down a different path. You have to do your own thing.

Pitchfork: I'm actually less surprised at the number of people who have given up than I am at how few people even started. In its own way, the Bush/Blair axis is every bit as onerous as Reagan/Thatcher. Reagan/Thatcher inspired and provoked probably two solid generations of angry, disaffected songwriters.

Ted Leo: Oh yeah. And stuff that still is often more my-go-to-get-angry stuff. The vitriol that was released through music back then is still relevant, even when it's talking about things that are only analogous to what's going on today, as opposed to what's actually going on.

Pitchfork: But I'm not hearing too much vitriol from current acts. I hear a lot of vague disaffection, and even a turn to this innocent Woodstock-era vibe, but not a lot of anger.

Ted Leo: I kind of have to plead the fifth on this one. I have my own personal disappointments on this stuff. I certainly wish that there was a more present general voice of specific dissent among the modern indie community at least. I'll excuse the "punk" community from that because it certainly exists there. My whole MO for my whole life has been to just keep my nose to the grindstone. Yeah, of course it's disappointing, but I'm not going to call anybody out on it. They should be able to do what they want to do, and if you or I or anyone else wants to support it it's up to them.

Pitchfork: And yet, ironically, someone like Springsteen took 30 years to make music that was explicitly political. He had never even endorsed a presidential election until John Kerry.

Ted Leo: That's absolutely true. But let's go back to punk and Reagan/Thatcher. Those songs, a lot of music from that era, when you need to get fired up you go back to that now and then. I go back to that often, you know? But ultimately, the way that someone like Bruce Springsteen approached dealing with political things, through his vignettes, he created a beautiful body of art that does deal with political things. Certainly not in as explicit a way, but I would be very upset if that body of work didn't exist. There are a bunch of songs that over the years I've continued to cover that have become important to me. I've tried to stop playing "Dancing in the Dark", but when I started doing that one to begin with I thought, "I've got to rescue 'Born in the USA' from its production values!" [laughs]

Pitchfork: You sound like Bono on Rattle and Hum.

Ted Leo: [laughs] Yeah. "President Reagan stole this song from Bruce Springsteen. We're giving it back!" Why I never play the Kelly Clarkson song now is because I really want to leave the song as something that I did, not something that I've done, you know? My love affair with Kelly Clarkson is largely, pretty much, with a wink and a nod. Not that I don't think she's talented, not that I don't think she's done great tings with other people's songs. But with Springsteen, or Curtis Mayfield, I've done them for years.

Pitchfork: There used to be a greater antagonism between the mainstream and the underground. Do you think that era is gone?

Ted Leo: Yeah, I think so. There would always be hardcore punk bands back then that would bust out their cheeky little cover of some Beach Boys song. It was an unspoken secret that you were still allowed to like other kinds of music. But certainly I think there has been an rapprochement in recent years. I don't know how to credit it, but it's got its negative aspects. It can tend to blur certain demarcating lines that I think are still somewhat real, or worth considering.But at the same time I as much as anyone love music. I'm not a rhetoritician, I'm a musician. A good song is a good song.

Pitchfork: There's a great story about when the Clash and Genesis bumped into each other at an airport in the early 1980s. Apparently Topper Headon snuck up to Phil Collins and told him "The other guys would kill me if they knew I was saying this, but I love your music."

Ted Leo: [laughs] I like Phil Collins. The flipside of that story is when Joe Strummer was invited to guest in the studio on one of Johnny Cash's last albums, and Don Henley was there. Joe Strummer walks over to introduce himself, and Don Henley wouldn't shake his hand. He said, "Yeah, I know who you are." [laughs]

Pitchfork: The vibe I get from the new record is a lot like Sandinista! There's the diversity of it, but mentally I keep applying album sides to it. Every few songs it feels like I've flipped over the LP.

Ted Leo: Well, it is a double LP. I'm really glad to hear you say that. That's one of the things I cling to about old media. I love the web. I barely buy CDs anymore. I mostly download stuff-- legally, of course. But I do really love the flow of the classic "album." I think it's a really good format for a musician to carry set of ideas, musical or topical, over a length of time. I really do like the ups and downs of an album. Part of the thing of getting to the two-year point of this record was that I had enough songs to make a shorter record, I suppose, earlier in the process, but it didn't feel like it had completed the arc. It didn't feel complete. In my own mind, even when I'm writing, there's an arc, a trajectory, that's going on, from the first song to the last song, to the extent that I barely have to give much thought to sequencing a record. By the time we get to the point of doing it, I know what the ebb and flow feels like to me. To hear that it does carry over is reassuring.

Pitchfork: Given how relatively few people bother with LPs anymore, or at this point even know the mechanics, do you risk people missing the point of that ebb and flow?

Ted Leo: I would hope not. When I am thinking of sequencing, I listen to it on my iPod or on CD. I mean, I have the test pressing of the record and I think it sounds good, but I don't go put on the record. I think the arrangement of the songs, whether you're pausing to flip the record or not, still have a record-side flow to it.

Pitchfork: How much of the diversity of the record was a conscious decision to try out a few new things that people might not expect from you?

Ted Leo: Not much. But there were a couple of moments The most glaring is probably the straight-reggae song ["The Unwanted Things"].

Pitchfork: And it is a straight-reggae song. It's not cod-reggae or fake reggae.

Ted Leo: [laughs] I started working on the song as a goof. Not to make a cod-reggae song, but with a drum machine and bass effects, just to have a fun afternoon making a real reggae song. When I got to the end of it, I liked it. With that particular song, there was a conscious decision. Live it'll be more of a punk-reggae/cod-reggae thing [laughs] but we started playing it in practice and thought "this could maybe work!" Then we thought, fuck it, let's do it for real. Why dumb it down? That one was very specific. If we want to do a reggae song, then why not actually do a reggae song? Other than that, everything did come up relatively organically. I will say that just about every element that is a little explicitly "let loose" on this record, it's actually all there on every record that I've done, but in the past I would have more self –consciously tried to cram it into a more restrictive "punk" form. So there was a certain taking off of the seatbelt, so to speak.

Pitchfork: But you do have songs like "A Bottle of Buckie" and "Bomb.Repeat.Bomb" right up against one another on the record, and I can't think of two songs more different than those.

Ted Leo: That's true. That's just the simple fact that I'm an old hardcore kid, and I listen to old hardcore music. But I also listen to the Replacements and Celtic folk and stuff. If there was any conscious decision it-- with the exception of the reggae songit was less about taking those specific steps toward something as genre specific as that as it was taking a step back and not allowing those things to be as specific as they wanted to be. Does that make sense? Going back to the album flow, that was actually one of those transitions that actually screamed out at me. It's just a good mixtape move. [laughs] You don't want to cram all the songs that sound the same into one section of the album. Also, thematically, the record starts out wit a few of the more musically poppy things, and content wise it follows from "Colleen" and "Bottle of Buckie"-- which are two of the least specific songs on the record, not really heavy. So by the end of that four or five song cycle, it was time to change it up and bring back whatever it is that "Bomb.Repeat.Bomb" is delivering.

Pitchfork: The album sound a little cleaner than the past too.

Ted Leo: The difference in sound quality, with every record, was a pretty specific choice. I felt like there was this glass ceiling of hi-fi. I knew something was up there but I hadn't been able to get there before. With Shake the Sheets that was part of the point of the production values, to be concise and hi-fit. When it came to this record, I wanted it to sound, production-wise, more like the classic records that I love. There's a flatter drum sound, a beefier, more diffuse bass sound. In terms of singing, I can't say I was trying to sing any more differently. If there's an evolution there, it's just part of the ongoing experience.

Pitchfork: Your singing sounds a little more economical.

Ted Leo: Ooh, interesting. In what way?

Pitchfork: Maybe a little more considered in your delivery? You're not rushing to get all you thoughts out.

Ted Leo: Huh, interesting. That's an interesting point. Another conscious decision about Shake the Sheets was to make my own songwriting a little more concise. The songs are a lot shorter, going from point A to point B a little more economically, at least musically, but lyrically I guess I didn't really achieve that so much on that record. [laughs] But during the lyric writing process behind this record, I definitely recall moments-- now that you bring this up-- when I would look at something and say "that's enough, you don't need to reiterate that line another way." I think I learned something from that process, and maybe that came to bear.

Pitchfork: Could you compare the creative input of alcohol versus caffeine?

Ted Leo: That's a really good question! At a certain point in alcohol consumption, when I think it is beneficial to the creative output, it kind of has some of the similar effects of caffeine. Energizing, loosening of the tongue. That's often how it works for me. You stop self-censoring yourself. But of course you have to wake up sober and reassess if what you were putting out was actually drivel or not. It's the zone where moderate meets too much with both of those things where they really have a similar effect. Obviously, once you cross that line with either of them, it gets dangerous. You get either sloppy and pass out with alcohol, or you get jittery and unable to focus with caffeine. [laughs] You have to ride that line.

Pitchfork: Could you give me an example of a good caffeine song and a good alcohol song on the album?

Ted Leo: Well, I guess I would say-- hold on [he digs around for a track list]..."Bomb.Repeat.Bomb." And "Annunciation Day/Born on Christmas Day", they were morning songs, written in the morning, lyrically, with large doses of either tea or coffee. As was "Some Beginner's Mind", and"The World Stops Turning". But some of the more ponderous ones, like "Lost Brigade" and "The Toro and the Toreador," those were culled out over many glasses of whiskey. Even some of the faster ones, like "Bottle of Buckie," other than the fact that it relates to something that took place in Glasgow, it makes me think of Scotch, because I think I was drinking a lot of it when I wrote it [laughs]. And "C.I.A", actually, that's a caffeine song. That was me, actually sitting in a café, drinking espressos and really thinking, reworking, rearranging. It's a really repetitive song. I had to wrangle some parts with that one to actually manage a six-minute, super repetitive pop song and have it work for me. That one more than probably any other song on the record is a caffeine song.